Friday, August 19, 2011

Unseen Enemies

I'm having a bit of a nervous episode so here's this:

...

Shaye hadn't left the house for several weeks. She couldn't remember how long ago it was when she boarded up the windows and doors. It had gotten so bad that she had to stuff the chimney with what was left of Kiki's novelty feather collection. It had been weeks, the stress of being isolated had started to take it's toll on them both.

Shaye was in her bedroom, the proportions of which were recorded every hour on the hour. She had a notebook for every geometrical property of the tiny space; concave angles, heigth, width, length, all of them were meticulously cataloged and stowed away in the "vault", which was codeword for her closet. She and Kiki had to use codewords because even though they had effectively trapped themselves in the house, they were still in danger of invasion.

The vault was starting to overflow with impeccably kept notebooks and was spilling out into the room itself.

How long had it been since all this turmoil began? Shaye couldn't tell, but the pile of records seemed to give an indication. She had been doing the hand thing longer then she cared to remember and it was only then that the realization began to sink in: with no frame of reference, she might be trapped in that room forever, doing the hand thing.

Shaye stormed out of her fort. The house itself wasn't much larger, her bedroom was connected to Kiki's with the only bathroom in between, the living room was only slightly larger than either bedroom combined and still had to accommodate the kitchen, hidden away behind the living room like a dungeon. Naturally, Kiki would be in there, behind a venerable pile of feather boas that had somehow escaped the attempt to clog the chimney, hiding herself so she could safely do that hand thing.

"Where are the Hollywood diet drops?" Shaye said. Something was shuffling around in the pile of boas but she wasn't sure it was Kiki. "You know I need those diet drops. Two drops, two pounds!" She said again.

The multi-colored boas reached as high as the refrigerator. She suspected that they've been there for so long that no one had cleaned out the fridge for a very very long time. The realization struck her like a cold blade to the chest, the contents of the fridge may have become sentient and was now lurking about the boas, ready to claim the house as it's own.

"Kiki, we're leaving!" Shaye proclaimed. "Get the convertible!"

Even during a crisis like this, she was prepared. There was a secret exit through the bathroom that not even that awful rabbit man with the paper gloves could find. Shaye hastily packed whatever she could into the duffel-bag she won on the cruise and made her escape.

What she failed to realize was that the emergency escape hatch was actually the broken window Kiki had neglected during the preparations from earlier.

Either way, Shaye was running through the streets with only a duffel-bag full of lip balm, now evading unseen enemies.